Today, the video's director, Joseph Kahn issued a statement on the controversy. As Billboard reports, Kahn said of the video's casting that "we collectively decided it would have been historically inaccurate to load the crew with more black actors as the video would have been accused of rewriting history. This video is set in the past by a crew set in the present." Watch the video above, and read why this year's VMAs were annoyingly problematic.